I'd been in the Michelin tent for about 20 minutes when the rain started—intense and sudden, loud enough to stop conversation. All the cars on the circuit were wearing slicks. I didn't know it at the time, but this rainstorm caused the dramatic crash between the No. 8 Toyota TS040 and the No. 3 Audi R18, ending the race for the latter. Still, I was aware that the army of tire-mounters in pit lane was about to get very busy swapping carcasses on and off of rims.

I asked Serge Grinsin, manager of Michelin's four-wheel racing programs, how many tire mounts they'd do in the 24-hour race. We were in a huge room at the back of the tent, filled with hundreds of tires, stacked seven high. He looked around and shrugged. He didn't know offhand.

Data is king

Grinsin can afford to be imprecise. There's no real competitive advantage to knowing the number of mounts and unmounts. Instead, the company is ruthlessly focused on usable data. Michelin's computer systems know exactly where every single tire is. Every one. They're all barcoded and tracked at each stage. Every single tire must go back to Michelin at the end of the race, regardless of condition or excuse. As a Michelin rep said in no uncertain terms, "God help a team that loses one of our tires."

That's no idle threat.

Each tire is a repository of proprietary tech. They can't let it fall into a competitor's hands—or afford to lose the data it provides. Michelin uses Le Mans as one giant real-world data mine, and the company embeds 34 engineers within the teams. Their mission is to suck as much usable information from the race as possible.

Grinsin said that at Le Mans, they expected 100,000 miles' worth of tire-testing data from the weekend. That's why they're there. Research is the reason Michelin goes racing at all.

A laboratory for road tires

Tire engineers can learn lessons about road-car compounds and construction from race tires. That's one of the reasons Michelin hated its Formula 1 program—the tiny tires didn't teach them much about road-tire physics. The larger tires, like the 18" LMP1 tires stacked all around us, actually can.

Even the tiny Nissan ZEOD RC front tire, whose construction was more an act of charity to Nissan than part of Michelin's normal racing-tire research program, taught the company lessons about using computer modeling to save time and effort. Michelin couldn't do an extensive real-world production and testing regimen on such a specialized tire, but with computer modeling, they didn't need to.

Reduced mass is the next frontier

Weight was another point of pride in the tent. Grinsin and his colleagues boasted of their ability to meet LMP1 regulations concerning mass reduction without compromising safety or tire performance. The tires in the tent around me, and on the cars lapping Circuit de la Sarthe outside, were 20 percent lighter than the old tires—22 lbs each instead of 25.5 lbs. Reduced unsprung mass delivers performance and economy benefits. According to Grinsin, the lighter tires had no downsides in terms of their performance characteristics.

Since Michelin considers racing "a laboratory for road tires," expect these lessons to trickle down to road cars—and not just in Michelin's lineup. Other tire suppliers use motorsports in the same way. If Michelin or one of its competitors decide low-mass performance tires are the next big thing, it won't happen in a vacuum. That's good news for enthusiasts, not just for race fans.